Dollhouse
by Winchestergirl67
Summary: The Winchesters would have everyone believe that they came from a normal family, but no one really knows what goes on behind anyone else's curtains at night. (oneshot co-written by loveintheimpala)


_The idea for this story came from the song Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez, which is a great song to check out if you haven't heard it before._

 _So I pitched this idea to loveintheimpala and she was kind enough to write it with me, so thank you so much to her!_

 _Hope you like it!:_)_

* * *

The Winchesters were a perfect family.

At least, that was what they would have everybody believe about them. On the outside—when they were in public—everything _appeared_ perfect. But it was more than that sometimes, it went beyond them wanting people to think that about their family, they _needed_ it. Because everyone knew, no one bothered the people who had model, pristine homes and faultless parents who had a happy marriage and had long since paid off their mortgage. No, people liked to talk about the kids whose parents were liars and cheats, they liked to gossip about the ones who showed up to gym with another mysterious bruise on their back, those who missed just one too many Tuesdays to be ill again. No one cared about those who had their faultless, safe, apple-pie lives. They weren't interesting.

In reality, the Winchester siblings had anything _but_ a normal, happy household. But, when the time came, when people surrounded them, when they walked through the gates of school together, they became plastic, and everything that waited for them outside was nothing, completely masked by their perfected illusion. As far as anybody else knew their hands were clean and their wallpaper glistened.

When they walked through the gates of school, smiles became fake and facts became lies. That was how it had to be.

That was the way they had been trained, it was what they had been taught. For as long as they could remember it was the story they had given. School only meant one thing—people. Those people asked questions, they made assumptions, they gossiped, rumours spread, and it only took one teacher to hear the wrong thing and their entire charade would come crashing down around them like shattered glass. And then it would be meetings with parents and councillors and those pushy adults who wanted to help them out of a situation they wouldn't be able to comprehend if they knew the true details of.

The intentions were clear; have people believe that they were a normal family and no one would ever question them, and then they would be gone, starting the same lie about their immaculate family all over again in a new town.

They knew better than to draw any real attention to themselves, they were smarter than to get truthfully honest with anyone they met. They got by on a routine of white lies and dodged questions. They glossed over the real details of what they went home to at night because nobody got suspicious of anything else. There was a point that they had learned to fly below the radar, their grades would remain high enough that they passed and weren't pulled into meetings, but they wouldn't have them high enough to be made a fuss of. They smiled at the right times and said the right lines when needed, and no one seemed to look twice.

Everyone who did come into contact with them could assume that they were a perfect family; that they had a nice house and a mother and father waiting on them for dinner. They could assume there were nice family photos, that they had a dog and a car and real friends.

But when everything was said and done, when school closed and they were back sheltered in their temporary home, when everyone walked away, the Winchesters really played. That was when they became who they really were, it was when the faking was over and they were allowed to let the smiles fade from their faces. They were allowed to be seen looking over their shoulders and holding a knife for protection, they were allowed to talk about their dad and what he was doing, they were allowed to confide in each other what they were really feeling.

At home, behind closed doors, nothing was what it seemed to the outside world. People went home and studied, they had dinner with their family and called their friends over for company. But the Winchesters went home and sharpened their knives, they cleaned guns and drew salt likes beneath the doors. Some people watched horror movies at night, they trained to kill things and they learned to hunt evil.

Their dad worked away, and that was all they would ever say about him. No one questioned it. They didn't say that he was hunting a nest of vampires, or that he was tracking a werewolf, or that he was destroying a spirit, because in their world he just worked away. That was all there was to it, and that was all anyone else needed to know.

The Winchesters saw things that nobody else could ever even dream of seeing, things that nobody else could even begin to comprehend.

But that all went away when they walked through those gates at school, it all faded away and became a mask.

Back to school, back to being plastic.

No one would ever know what went on behind the curtains of their motel room. No one would ever understand what they talked about or what they thought about at night. No one would ever realise that they slept with knives beneath their pillows and guns beside their beds. They would never know, because no one would ever see it in them.

People looked at the Winchesters, never knowing that the eldest was the sole protector of his sibling. No one knew that sometimes that bruise darkening Dean's eye was something more than just a petty scuffle with another student, they wouldn't ever know that sometimes Sam wore longer sleeves to mask a bruise he had picked up being trained to kill things.

No one would ever understand what was said when they looked between each other in the hallway. Some families were close, others were simply strangers who shared a last name, and then there were Sam and Dean Winchester. Nobody ever quite understood the devotion they had to each other, or just how far they were prepared to go for each other. No one understood why they were so close to each other, and they couldn't comprehend what they had been through together to leave them clinging to each other for support in the way that they did, even without the brothers realising that they were doing it. Some would comment that it was sweet, the way they both seemed to look out for each other, even when they were with other people, they never passed each other without a sign of acknowledgement. Dean would be blunt about who his brother was, and what would happen should anyone get on the wrong side of them.

But other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the siblings. They were perfect, no one knew anything about them or where they came from, no one knew what they went home to at night, but that didn't matter, because they were so normal.

To everyone else, the Winchesters were a perfect family, and that's what they would have everyone believe.

Even if it was the furthest thing away from the truth...

Everyone thought they were perfect...because they had never looked through the curtains.


End file.
